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From Maine to California, the midterm elections surely will test the
candidates. But they also will test history, for history supports the
belief – held by Democrats – that they will win both houses of Congress.

Today, Republicans hold 223 of 435 House seats. In the Senate this past
year, there were 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and a party of one, James
Jeffords, whose defection from the GOP shifted control of that chamber
to the Democrats.

Tuesday contains the four possibilities of all midterms: The House goes
Republican, the Senate Democratic. The House goes Democratic, the Senate
Republican. Both houses go Republican. Both go Democratic.

But the safest prediction isn't the last – that both houses will go
Democratic – but that the elections will be very close. The reasons are
apparent. Terrorism and the necessity to war against it have made
ordinary politics less compelling. Not that they were compelling
previously. They were stalemated. (See the 2000 elections.) No big
issues are in play this year. Mostly tactical campaigns have been waged.

Writing in the fall issue of Hoover Digest, political scientists
David Brady and Jeremy Pope report the history that has fed Democratic
hopes. Since 1860, with only two exceptions – 1934 and 1998 – the party
of the sitting president has lost seats in midterm elections. If you
look at the period since the end of World War II and consider only a
president's first midterm elections – which is what George W. Bush will
enjoy or endure on Tuesday – the president's party has lost an average
of 26 seats.

Mr. Brady and Mr. Pope break down the numbers. The three most recent
Democratic presidents – Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton –
averaged a loss of 29 seats in the first midterms of their tenures. The
four most recent Republican presidents – Dwight Eisenhower, Richard
Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush – averaged a loss of 17
seats.

Those numbers led Democrats earlier this year to predict large gains
that would strengthen their tenuous grip on the Senate and give them
control of the House. Large Democratic gains aren't necessary for those
outcomes, however. Small ones will suffice.

Consider a fact noticed by Mr. Brady and Mr. Pope: that "the smallest
first-term losses" for an incumbent president "were [John F.] Kennedy in
1962 and [George H.W.] Bush in 1990 – both losing fewer than 10 seats."
George W. Bush thus can outperform history – he can lose not even one
Senate seat and only six House seats – and still face a Democratic House
and Senate in January

If things are that close, however, they easily could move in ways
frustrating to Democrats. If House Republicans lose just five seats – as
they did in the 1998 midterms – they would retain control by a single
vote. If Senate Republicans, meanwhile, netted one seat, they would have
50 seats but effective control of the Senate because of the vice
president's vote. In sum, the GOP could lose five seats in the House,
gain one in the Senate and have what Mr. Bush ardently is campaigning
for – Republican control of both houses.

Mr. Brady and Mr. Pope won't be surprised if the 2002 elections are even
closer – as they surmise they might be – than those four years ago. They
have devised an approach to predicting elections whose virtue is that it
yields the same results for all elections since World War II. Their
approach centers on "vulnerable seats" and whether there is "a political
trend" toward or against a party that could affect the election results
by tipping close races – as happened in 1978 (for Republicans) and 1982
(for Democrats).

Mr. Brady and Mr. Pope say Democrats could win as many as 224 House
seats and Republicans as many as 227. But only if there is a partisan
trend for Democrats in the first case or for Republicans in the second.
And they don't see a trend either way, because they say (rightly)
neither party has a set of issues likely to move voters nationwide. As
for the Senate, Mr. Brady and Mr. Pope say the winner will have only a
one- or two-seat advantage.

They don't say which party will prevail in each house or how. So I will
venture the following:

Republicans pick up Missouri and South Dakota but lose Arkansas and New
Hampshire, thus leaving the Senate where it is now. Republicans,
meanwhile, lose three House seats and thus retain control. Status will
prevail. And because politics is inevitably an argument about the
future, the 2004 election will begin. It isn't too early to hope for an
election about big ideas and new directions.

JWR contributor Terry Eastland is is publisher of The Weekly Standard.Comment by clicking here.

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